John Dowd criticized for forwarding email praising Robert E. Lee

Pete Rose is suing John Dowd, the man who investigated the all-time hit king in 1989 for gambling on baseball, alleging that the investigator defamed him with allegations of sexual misconduct.
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Attorney John Dowd departs Manhattan Federal Court March 23, 2011 in New York City.(Photo: Getty Images)

President Trump’s lawyer on Wednesday fanned an already-incendiary racial debate by forwarding an email advocating protection of Confederate monuments and claiming that the protest group Black Lives Matter had been infiltrated by terrorists.

Trump’s lawyer John Dowd told The Washington Post he “shares a lot of things with people” and said it was unfair to equate forwarding an email with espousing its contents.

Dowd sent the email to administration allies and journalists amid a firestorm over the president’s remarks about the deadly weekend protests in Charlottesville. Dowd, 76, a veteran of Washington political scandals, was recently hired to help Trump respond to an investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Dowd, in an interview Wednesday, confirmed to The Post that he forwarded an email that appeared to be written by longtime conspiracy theorist Jerome Almon. But Dowd stressed he was a history buff who has studied Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, whose role in the Civil War is memorialized by statues around the nation.